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ndogg writes "Netflix now works on Linux... sort of. The folks at iheartubuntu have figured out a way to get Netflix to run on the Windows version of Firefox using Wine (with a number of custom patches) and Silverlight. They plan on releasing packages for it all soon. Currently, it seems they have only had success with 32-bit, while compiling for 64-bit is tricky."

Given that Netflix' CEO was (until last month) a member of the board of directors of Microsoft, and owns about $6 Million in Microsoft stock, I think he probably doesn't want Linux to become a strong desktop option...

Netflix works fine on the Mac, which is a bigger threat to Microsoft's desktop dominance than Linux is.

Apple's Mac is clearly no threat to Microsoft. They've shown themselves perfectly happy to have a profitable niche, rather than lower prices and cater to the unwashed masses.

The real threat to Windows is Android... A decent Android tablet is only $80, plus a few for bluetooth keyboard and stand. Viewsonic is embedding Android systems in their monitors, now, so you can go buy a new monitor for your PC, and later decide the PC its attached to is redundant. I'm frustrated nobody has put together a polished Linux OS layer for Android, ala. Cygwin or MacPorts, so a number of Linux apps I need can't be run on Android. Microsoft knows the threat, and they've (re-)entered the tablet market to try and just slow the competition down, and divide the market, with Win8, rather than let a free and open option gain dominance and that magical economies of scale that suddenly tips the balance of power.

Netflix doesn't seem happy about Android, either. They dragged their feet as long as they could on getting out a Netflix app for Android, and while it's out there now, it sure performs like crap on my nice fast cell phone that easily runs everything else... I suppose no matter how much Netflix loves Microsoft, they can't ignore the market to the point of their own demise.

Meanwhile, HuluDesktop has been available for Linux for a good long time... If you want to stream TV shows and a few movies on your Linux DVR, Hulu Plus is obviously the way to go.

Android is Linux, it doesn't need any compatibility layer!You can just install you distro of choice in a chroot. Debian and Gentoo both work great for me.The lack of X11 acceleration is annoying but everything I have tried has run.

--I can already watch Netflix streaming in Vmware Workstation/Player (Win7--64 guest) running on a 64-bit Linux host with accelerated video drivers - which I believe is a better and more natural arrangement. WINE's work, while nice to have, is not the only way to accomplish these things.

--I can already watch Netflix streaming in Vmware Workstation/Player (Win7--64 guest) running on a 64-bit Linux host with accelerated video drivers - which I believe is a better and more natural arrangement. WINE's work, while nice to have, is not the only way to accomplish these things.

Better... you can do that for free? Without paying MS for the privilege of watching NetFlix?

I haven't had Flash installed for years now, and doesn't seem like I'm missing anything. Most video sites (including YouTube or pr0n have options for loading an HTML5 video player, or will do so if they detect an iOS device.

Does HTML5 work yet? Doesn't much of the hyped functionality require additional stuff to make it work? Ie, you also have to have extra codecs, or javascript, or something else. While Flash has problems, HTML5 certainly does also and still can not do what Flash does.

There really is a place in the market for a media programming language thing. Markup languages can not match that, no matter what the web oriented fanboys think. Now maybe Flash is the wrong thing for that, and Silverlight is even worse, but

A while back, LoveFilm UK moved away from Flash to Silverlight citing DRM reasons. Apparently Flash DRM isn't good enough, while Silverlight DRM is. They also claimed that it was the studios that required the Silverlight DRM [lovefilm.com], so blame Hollywood.

Netflix can either set minimum silverlight to 5 or find another way to block it. It will be interesting to see if they do that.

Um, I just happened to try this out a few nights ago on my Linux Mint 13 laptop. I had Silverlight 4 on Firefox 14 installed under Wine1.4. The Netflix page made me download a newer version of Silverlight which didn't work.

Of course, I didn't bother with any of the wine patches, so I probably lose anyway. I was going to try Win7 under VirtualBox next to see how that performs.

You don't own any optical media? I thought about that for a long time - just get rid of everything I have so I don't have to store it. I replaced the player to play my old content, I have hundreds of legit physical CDs and DVDs and a couple BDs.

I didn't even know that it could do netflix until I took the new player out of the box and set it up.

I started ripping my DVDs a while ago. I bought 3 2TB disks just before the floods and put them in a RAID-Z array, giving me 4GB of usable space. That's enough for full backups of my laptop (with periodic snapshots) and for my DVD collection (probably about 1TB when I've ripped them all). The NAS box runs FreeBSD and is connected to my projector and speakers. Because none of the streaming services use open standards for their services, I can't use them from this machine, so they don't get my money even

The selection in Canada is terrible. I hooked up a Roku box for one of my customers who bought one, and there was not one movie or show on Netflix that they wanted to watch. (I saw a few things I could have watched, but to say I was underwhelmed is an understatement) I left them exploring some of the other (free) channels that the Roku could connect to, but I was not optimistic.

Seriously though, I wouldn't bother with Netflix when I can download most any movie or show that has ever existed and keep it forev

OK, here is a test for you. Using your regular channels, can you see if you can currently get any of the following?

All the Curious George episodes (I can only find 1ep on easynews)Harold and the Purple Crayon episodes (None on ezn)All the Thomas & Friends (A few on ezn)Go Diego Go (I can only find a few german ones)Similar luck on torrent sites too, but I can't check right now.

I won't go on, but there is lots of stuff for kids (and adults too, but granted, not as much) that's not easy to find unless it'

This is for the people who won't use Linux because it doesn't run Netflix, not the people who won't use Netflix because it doesn't run on Linux. Netflix don't want you, don't care about supporting you and might in fact hate it because it causes problems with their content providers who demand "robust" DRM. But as usual there's hacktivists that won't take no for an answer and they'll reverse engineer, emulate, patch and prod it until it works, it's how Linux got off the ground in the first place. It certainl

Perhaps the reason Netflix is using Silverlight is not because of some evil Microsoft conspiracy, but the fact that the Linux market is too small to develop and support for and Netflix can't guarantee the studio-required DRM will not be circumvented.

But yeah, it's probably a vast criminal conspiracy just to troll/.'ers. We're that important.

Indeed. If their Android app wasn't so poorly written we might be able to run it through an android emulator.
I would wager it doesn't work -at all- on at least 25% of the android devices on the market, and quite poorly on another 25%, particularly after their recent UI update.

I don't know what kind of slack jawed yokels they have on their android development team but seriously, WTH guys?

No. Netflix has an incestuous relationship with Microsoft. That's why they are using Silverlight while Amazon is using Flash.

So Amazon works fine in Linux.

Yeah, this is the real answer. Drop Netflix for Amazon Prime streaming until Netflix provides a Linux client. It's cheaper per year. Sorry you lose some of the content that's only on Netflix, but it seems like they've been losing some of the good shows anyway.

When Netflix first came out, it was pretty awesome. I was working in near-realtime video transmission then, and was pretty picky about mpeg4 quantization and vertical sync artifacts. Netflix had actually done a pretty good job with handling all th

DRM will always be circumvented if there is any interest in doing so, it is purely security through obscurity... If the device is capable of decoding and displaying the stream then it's also capable of recording it and it's only a matter of someone working out how.

If such DRM hasn't been cracked already it's because noone has bothered, and why would they? The movies and tv shows on netflix are old and generally of inferior quality to high definition broadcast tv or bluray media, so the pirates will source t

but the fact that the Linux market is too small to develop and support for and Netflix can't guarantee the studio-required DRM will not be circumvented.

ChromeOS has a netflix plugin. ChromeOS is basically a limited Linux distro, with a very limited X11 window manager. Netflix already *has* a working solution for the Linux market, and they added special checks so it won't run on non-ChromeOS machines.

I'm glad we have this workaround now, and I donated to the developer, but if I'm going to buy a video, I'd at least buy it from Amazon -- where they don't go out of their way to sabotage Linux and at least have a few help page entries about it.

Why would I pay Netflix when they won't bother to support my OS? If they want my money, they can port their software to my OS, or they can package Wine with their software, and support that.

They would also have to change their policy on DRM-free content [ninapaley.com] before they get any of my money. I'm willing to pay for TV, I'm even willing to watch their ads. I'm not willing to facilitate an effort to make DRM the norm.

Any decently designed crypto system should be able to drop in a null cipher as easily as any other. If it takes more than a trivial amount of work to add a DRM-free option, that's a sign of really bad design decisions on the part of their engineers. Netflix should fix that for the sake of their own platforms robustness.

We had non DRM rentals before in the form of VHS and VCD...We could copy our VHS tapes if we wanted, most people didn't anyway.

Now rentals are encumbered with DRM, those people who copied VHS tapes now crack the DRM while many of us who used to pay for VHS tapes now pirate because we detest the idea of DRM.

To reiterate, i will only pay for and/or put up with commercials on DRM-free media, if the content is encumbered with DRM i will either acquire a pirate copy where the DRM has been removed (and the commer

To reiterate, i will only pay for and/or put up with commercials on DRM-free media, if the content is encumbered with DRM i will either acquire a pirate copy where the DRM has been removed (and the commercials too as an f-you) or do without the content at all so you will never make any money from me so long as you try to force evils like DRM on me.

If you buy DRM-free media, that's a good idea. But if you pirate the DRM'ed ones, you're probably just provoking them to add more DRM to fight piracy.

The idea of a rental is problematic anyway for digital content. You loan me a physical object, you no longer have it. I use it and then give it back, and you have it again. With an electronic version, you give me a copy of an object, but still have the original. Later, I delete the copy and you still have the original. The problem is trying to use a metaphor that simply doesn't make sense as the basis for a business model.

The service of value that Netflix offers is not rental, it's access to an ever-i

1. You're correct that it runs under Linux. Unfortunately Linux is not the same thing as "The operating system commonly known as Linux", which we'd call GNU/Linux if it wasn't for the fact that would be kowtowing to a Dirty Smelly Hippie(tm). Android is not GNU/Linux, it has a significantly different API. It merely shares the same kernel.

2. Netflix is compiled code, and is compiled for ARM. Your Ubuntu desktop, on the other hand, is an Intel machine. So yes, you'll

Most likely people have looked into this before, but I would suspect my blu-ray player is not running windows. Maybe instead of trying to get netflix to work in a browser in WINE in linux, they should try looking at how blu-ray players do it?

If they could get it working in linux for arm I think people would be more than happy calling that "netflix on linux" because they'd just go buy their rPi's and happy happy joy joy. Furthermore there's a trick with flash to tweak one of the libs in android so it appears as non-android which allows hulu to play as well. These 2 systems for arm worked up for normal linux on ARM would give the rPi and slashdotters everything they want. So I kind of agree that someone should be out there trying to get these bin

I have an LG TV (LV5500 I think) that has Netflix as a built-in app. The TV's operating system is Linux, and its manual even includes a copy of the GPL, along with a list of libraries (e.g. FFMPEG, Apache, etc). They've probably partnered with Netflix to get some sort of BLOB that can be run only on the intended hardware, so I doubt that it is free or open.
TLDR; the title should says something about "desktop" or "Intel", because my ARM-based TV plays Netflix just fine thank you.

I was twice a Netflix member. I quit because I wasn't happy with their selection, which is really only of value if you have children. Now I'm an Amazon Prime Member. Amazon is priced competitively plus as a former studen,t I'm now paying $40 per year for the short term. The selection of "free" movies for Prime members is comparable to Netflix's selection but there is a greater selection at additional prices. Plus, I get the added benefit of free 2-day shipping for anything I buy through Amazon. On the

Regular TV is broadcast in a standard format that can be received on any compatible device, where the specifications required for compatibility are openly available for anyone to implement.VHS was the same...

Now media is delivered in drm-encumbered proprietary formats, all in the name of "preventing piracy", however piracy is now more common than ever.

I used to buy movies on VHS and/or watch them on broadcast TV, but if you try to force me to use a proprietary device to watch tv i will just find superior alternatives instead that can be viewed on devices of my choice.

The warez versions are massively superior to what netflix offers:

- you can watch the files on any device thats physically capable with no arbitrary restrictions- you can download at any time and watch later (eg if you have bandwidth caps during the day but not at night, or want to watch on a portable device)

I would pay for a legit service which offered the same quality of service as warez, but since such a service isn't available i can't... Those services which are available are clearly inferior and entirely unusable for me.

I would pay for a legit service which offered the same quality of service as warez, but since such a service isn't available i can't...

Interesting opinion... It's bullshit, IMO, but whatever. You act like warez is your only other option. Whatever helps you sleep at $BEDTIME. Everyone has different morals.

I was once a Netflix subscriber. My XBox Live subscription ran out, and I wasn't playing many games (and I realize how shitty it is to pay for ads in a service that any PC can do w/ server list, not loading down MS servers), so I sold my Xbox & games, then called Netflix support when I couldn't seem to get it working on my perso

I thought someone would eventually come through and get some sort of Netflix working on Linux, but Silverlight working right was not at the top of my list. I was expecting either a dedicated and optimized "player" for the Android app or a port of the the ChromeOS version.

We heard you liked Netflix so we had some hackers, hack your hack to hack wine to hack firefox on windows hack.Gotta give the guys credit for figuring this out, but sheesh that's quite a software stack just to watch a grade B movie from 1982.